INSTINCT, INTELLIGENCE AND CHARACTER

frequent repetition without conscious memorizing. They
are the cases when, at need, a mnemonic may be excusable,
as when a landsman remembers that the port light is port
wine coloured, or when we say " Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November "

Whenever possible, however, pupils should be discouraged
from memorizing by means of such tricks, or by means of
sheer repetition, and encouraged to remember by under-
standing. Having children understand and be interested
is of far greater importance psychologically than any of
the other facts about economical learning which experiment
has given us. For example, it is better that they should
rather slowly reconstruct a required formula than that
they should learn it so as to reproduce it quickly by heart.
This is one of the ways in which examinations encourage
bad teaching; for it pays a teacher to make his pupils
learn formulae by heart, whereas it would be far better for
their mental development if they relied entirely on under-
standing them. True, by making them memorize, teachers
can get some pupils through an examination who would
never pass on the other method But they never should
pass, they ought to be doing something else.

It should not on the other hand be assumed that a formula,
or any piece of mental apparatus, should necessarily be
completely understood before it is used. Use leads to under-
standing, if there is from time to time a conscious effort to
understand, and use will lead to memorizing. It is only
conscious learning of stuff which is unappreciated that is
reprehensible. Examples should be worked from first
principles rather than from rules.

Understanding will go a long way even with historical
dates. At least it prevents a child from dating Sir Walter
Raleigh before the voyage of Columbus Sheer memorizing
of dates can be done before the age of eleven : but the experi-
ments of Sturt and Oakden have shown that the development
of an understanding time-sense is not to be expected much

248